Prepare For Death and Follow Me...

Gretel is excited for Black Friday because she says that one of the places she likes to shop online "has everything." I asked her if it has a God so powerful that he can create rock so heavy that not even he can pick it up. She said, "nothing impossible."

November 23, 2023

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Best thing about Covid is that you're allowed to walk into a bank looking like a bandit.

November 23, 2021

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The epitaph on the grave of Adam Ranch (1808-1882), one of my 32 4x-great-grandfathers.

"All ye who come to my grave to see,

Prepare for death and follow me.

Prepare for death, make no delay,

For suddenly I was called away."

Good advice.

Pericles- "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."

Sometimes the two are not mutually exclusive.

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Gretel and Zuzu at the graves of Adam and Christiana Dosch, two of their sixty-four 4th great-grandparents. Adam died 100 years ago yesterday. And we found a hilarious surprise in the graveyard too.

November 23, 2019

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From Bob Woodward's book, Fear.

"(Former economic advisor Gary) Cohn wrote a joke for Trump to use at the Gridiron Dinner. We've made enormous progress on the wall. All the drawings are done, all the excavating is done, all the engineering is done. The only thing we been stumbling with is we haven't been able to figure out how to stretch the word Trump over 1200 miles. Trump wouldn't use it."

Come on Trump, what the heck is wrong with you? That's a good joke.

November 23, 2018

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I'm thankful for all the times people fell down in hilarious ways but weren't hurt.

November 23, 2017

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Trump kind of has a point when he says he has no business conflicts of interest, because we knew about his business interests, we knew he said his kids were going to run his businesses, and we elected him anyway. 

But then we also knew he said he was going to kill the families of ISIS members and bring back torture, so forget what I just said.

November 23, 2016

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One of these guys is not so majestic.

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The real miracle would be if seemingly miraculous things never happened.

November 23, 2013

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If you want to experience something strange, walk through the grocery store with a 2-week-old baby in your arms. Crowds will part out of your way and gaze at you in wonder. I felt like King Arthur carrying the Holy Grail.

November 23, 2013

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Friends- what I just heard on the news literally made my jaw drop. For all full-time Wal-Mart employees to make $25,000 a year, the average Wal-Mart trip's bill would need to raise... wait for it... 15 cents! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!

November 23, 2012

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There's a bunch of free food outside my house. I tried to give it the 99% protest but unless they were all hiding in their tents at 5pm they were actually the 0%. Then I tried to give it to the rescue mission, or as I call them- the 1%. The poorest 1%. They weren't there either. Now it belongs to the 1 in 7,000,000,000- you.

November 22, 2011

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A blind cat chasing its tail... that's gotta be a metaphor for something, right?

November 23, 2010

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On this day in 1924, Edwin Hubble published his discovery in The New York Times that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another galaxy far outside our own Milky Way.

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Freddie Mercury announced that he was HIV-positive on this day in 1991, quite a surprise then hearing the next day that he died.

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The last Sumatran rhinoceros in Malaysia, Imam, died on this day in 2019.

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Boris Karloff was born on this day in 1887. Impossible to imagine him as a little baby.

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Harpo Marx was born on this day in 1888. He wasn't all just honks and whistles, he also left us with this piece of wisdom, from his book, Harpo Speaks.

"Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were."

He was also inducted into the United States croquet Hall of Fame in 1979.

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Miley Cyrus was born on this day in 1992. I resisted, but she won me over with her Jolene cover.

https://youtu.be/wOwblaKmyVw

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Roy Acuff left us on the same day.

"Any game you play, you got to lose sometime."

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The French novelist Andre Malraux left us on this day in 1976.

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." 

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Roald Dahl left us on this day in 1990. 

https://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/the-filthiest-joke-ever-hidden-in-childrens-movie

Snozzberries are dicks.

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On the same day, former Phillies catcher Bo Diaz was tragically crushed by a satellite dish at the age of 37.

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Tortured soul, Klaus Kinski, died on this day in 1991.

"I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul ... You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price."

He also said one of the most untrue things I've ever heard in my life.

"I am your fairy tale. Your dream. Your wishes and desires, and I am your thirst and your hunger and your food and your drink."

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Another notable birthday- Franklin Pierce (1804)

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What are the odds that you became you? Glad you asked.

http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/WhatAreTheOdds_4ebb1b0343634_w1266.png

November 23, 2011

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Fiona Apple's letter to her fans about cancelling her tour to stay home with her dying dog. A must read.

https://www.themarginalian.org/index.php/2012/11/22/fiona-apple-janet-letter/

November 23, 2012

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Einstein's brain had an extra ridge in the prefrontal cortex.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/23/165483381/scientists-get-a-new-look-at-einsteins-brain

November 23, 2012

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Holy shit, literally!

Cracked- 6 Filthy Jokes You Won't Believe Are from the Bible

6. King Rehoboam's Dick-Measuring Contest With His Dead Dad

5. Solomon Writes About His Boner

4. Elijah Thinks Your God Is Probably Pooping

3. Ehud Stabs the Crap Out of Some Dude ... Literally

2. St. Paul Invites the Galatians to Cut Off Their Dongs

1. David (of "and Goliath" Fame) Is Watching You Poop

Read it for all the juicy details

http://www.cracked.com/article_20694_6-filthy-jokes-you-wont-believe-are-from-bible.html

November 23, 2013

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Logical.

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Everything is a miracle?

Thích Nhất Hạnh:

"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.

"But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child."

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Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman- "The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy."

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Golda Meir- "The world hates a Jew who fights back. The world only loves us when we are to be pitied."

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Kierkegaard- "The only intelligent tactical response to life’s horror is to laugh defiantly at it."

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Aristotle- "No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."

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Andre Gide, The Counterfitters- "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity."

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Huxley- "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."

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Voltaire- "Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do."

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Quentin Crisp- "There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."

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Sagan- "The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."

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Vonnegut:

Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.